Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 11:45 pmI think this is relevant also:
TURKISH Cypriot support for the UN-backed Annan plan is declining, according to a newly-published survey in the north.
The poll conducted in February 2006 and published on Monday by the Political Trends Research body of the ‘foreign ministry’ suggests that popular support for the plan has fallen from 65 per cent of the voting-age population to just 55 per cent.
Commenting on the findings, the poll’s main architect Kudret Akay told the Cyprus Mail, “It is an indication of the withering away of the will for a solution.”
Akay said the trend was especially visible in the Morphou area, where he said support for the plan had fallen from 70 per cent in the 2004 referendum to a mere 35 per cent in 2006. He believed the steep decline had come firstly as a result of disappointment caused by the Greek Cypriot rejection of the plan, and then from political developments in its aftermath.
The survey, Akay said, questioned 960 individuals during February this year in order to ascertain whether a shift had taken place in the attitude of Turkish Cypriots since the 2004 referendum.
One change is that more Turkish Cypriots now appear to believe that the Annan plan should be renegotiated. In 2004, only 13.8 per cent saw this as a viable option, whereas today 32.6 would support such a move.
The poll also showed a slight rise in the percentage of people who believed it acceptable to sit down and negotiate with Greek Cypriots on a solution package that was not based on the Annan plan, from 22.6 per cent in 2004 to 27.4 per cent in 2006.
But there was a fall, from 8.4 per cent in 2004 to just 5.6 per cent in 2006, in the number of Turkish Cypriots who believed that negotiations on a plan should do more to address the concerns of Greek Cypriots.
And there was also a fall in the percentage of those who would like to see the Annan plan implemented unilaterally in the north, from 16.5 per cent to 9.7 per cent.
